Monthly Archives: February 2015

An Egyptian court declared Gaza's ruling Hamas faction a terrorist group Saturday, one month after a similar ruling against its armed wing, the Ezzedin al-Kassam Brigades. Another court sentenced Egypt's top Muslim Brotherhood leaders to life in prison, over a violent clash during an attack on the group's Cairo headquarters in June 2013.

A video released by ISIS in Libya and published by the Arabic-language Asharq al-Awsat shows the two perpetrators of a deadly attack on the Corinthia Hotel in January threatening that ISIS's newly-established presence in the country would be used as a springboard to invade Europe. The footage itself is believed to have been taken

US National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Tuesday that Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu's March 3 speech in Congress is "destructive" to the relationship between the two countries. Rice made the comments in an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS. "The relationship between Israel as a country and the United States as a country

It seems Netanyahu’s crime is not so much a breach of diplomatic protocol, but rather, opposing the Administration’s position on making concessions to Iran. But don't the American citizens deserve a debate? On March 3rd, despite conflicting opinions on the wisdom of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s addressing the U.S. Congress on Iran without specific U.S.

The European Union's foreign policy chief on Tuesday said that an Iran nuclear deal was "at hand", AFP reported. "We cannot miss this opportunity," Federica Mogherini said at Chatham House, a think tank in London, urging different sides to show political will ahead of a new round of talks scheduled in Geneva next week.

A group of Iranian dissidents said on Tuesday that Iran has an "underground top-secret site" that is enriching uranium intended for nuclear weapons and which has been hidden from the West for years, Fox News reports. According to the Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the complex, called Lavizan-3,

Iraqi officials have expressed irritation and analysts skepticism at the US prediction that an offensive to retake Iraq's key city of Mosul from jihadists could be launched in April-May. Mosul is a major hub for the Islamic State (ISIS) group and holds special significance as the place where jihadist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed

A calamitous combination of negligence by Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's government in failing to provide vaccines, mixed with rampant smuggling from Israel, has apparently launched an outbreak of brucellosis among Arab residents of Judea and Samaria. Brucellosis, also known as Bang's disease, is a highly contagious condition passing from animals to humans,

Jihadists from the Islamic State group (ISIS) have kidnapped at least 90 Assyrian Christians in northeast Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Britain-based monitor said the abductions took place on Tuesday after ISIS seized two Assyrian villages from Kurdish forces in the province of Hassakeh, reports AFP. The abduction

As the "unity partners" of Hamas and Fatah appear to be sliding into war in Gaza, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday tried to downplay the stabbing, a day earlier, of a Fatah official. The official accuses Hamas of trying to assassinate him. "Some people are trying to create chaos but we